The age of high imperialism was characterised by a high degree of mobility and long-distance migration, and, at the same time, by nationalism and a growing interest to define ethnic and racial identities on a global scale. In this context, “diasporic attachments” (E. Rosenberg) gained in significance. However, what kind of global communities can be described as “diasporas” and what role they played in the context of imperial expansion, is far from clear. By defining the term broadly, integrating migrants’ communities of many different ethnic origins and types, the conference intends to revisit questions concerning the formation of colonial empires and global communities. We want to provide a forum in which research on different ethnic diasporas in the decades between 1870 and 1914 can be related with each other. By comparing their inner coherences and structures, we will explore differences and parallels, but also connections and processes of transfer between them.

First of all, the conference aims to analyse, in comparative perspective, the role diasporas played in the context of the imperial politics of powers such as Japan, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and the USA. In the age of high imperialism, when it became increasingly important to demonstrate a strong global presence, these governments took an unprecedented interest in their overseas emigrants. They made various more or less successful efforts to direct migrants to the colonies and protectorates of their countries of origin. At the same time, those migrants who had moved to non-colonial world regions were reconceptualised as members of an imaginary “greater empire” with persisting cultural, political and economic ties. We will examine in how far overseas diasporas were instrumentalised by the imperial politics of their home countries, and, the other way round, in how far developments in the diasporas influenced the politics in the countries of origin. Here, a central question will be in how far ideas of “imagined communities” could be produced in overseas diasporas and then transferred back to the home country. We aim to challenge the paradigm that imperialist ideologies always originated in the mother countries of colonial empires.

The diasporas which developed against the background of the colonial aspirations of their countries of origin are then to be contextualised with diasporas of migrants whose motherlands had no colonies of their own. Chinese and South Asian diasporas, for example, formed large and influential minorities in the colonies of different imperial powers. A third diasporic type, which will be dealt with at the conference, is that of the diaspora without homeland, such as the Jewish and African diasporas. As the age of high imperialism was also the age of pan-Africanism and Zionism, we want to investigate whether the construction of global communities by nationalist ideologies, which had an impact on all three diasporic types, can be compared with each other and what role existing and imaginary homelands played in that context. Overall, the conference aims to shed new light on the dynamics of colonialism and of global integration in the age of high imperialism.

The conference is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. If you are interested in participating, please register with Berit L. Gerling (BL.Gerling@student.uni-kassel.de)